


The Question

by babe_without_the_arms



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 05:33:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12647106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babe_without_the_arms/pseuds/babe_without_the_arms
Summary: "This world wasn’t enough for him."A weird, self-indulgent shippy oneshot sketch about these alleged jazz-and-smoking jacket evenings implied in TFD.





	The Question

**Jan. 20, 1996**

**3:24 pm**

“Anyway, it’ll take me most of the night to finish, thanks to the dunces downstairs dragging their knuckles all day and not getting back to me until ten minutes ago with their end of the report, but I should have the rest of the file for you tomorrow morning.”

“Good. Did you talk to Reynolds?”

“Yeah, he said he’s still waiting on clearance for the intelligence data. I’ll check back in with him tomorrow morning.”

“All right.”

“That’s all, I think. Oh, before I go--Happy birthday, chief.”

“Thank you, Albert.”

“Many returns and all that. Tell whichever of your Miss America girlfriends that’s accompanying you tonight that white wine usually pairs with fish. Start with the fork on the left.”

"Albert.”

“What. Don’t tell me you’re planning on a quiet evening at home for your big 50th.”

“Yes. Too behind on work.”

“Uh huh.”

“... What about you?”

“What did I just say? I’m finishing this report for you like you asked. Deadlines are deadlines.”

“Why don't you come over, bring your work and some records. I have some unopened Bordeaux and Partagás.”

“... All right. What time?”

* * *

**9:06 pm**

“So what did you bring?” Gordon asked, filling two glasses of wine for the both of them on his coffee table.

Albert put a small stack of records on the table next to the glasses. “Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, some early Coltrane. A few other things.”

“What’s the record under your other arm,” Gordon said, settling back onto the couch and lighting a cigar.

“... Glen Miller.”

“Paydirt! Put it on.”

Albert sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Fine. Don't say I never did anything for you.”

“Never, Albert.”

Albert dropped the needle, and “Pennsylvania 6-5000” kicked up.

“You don't like swing, Albert?” Gordon asked, tapping his foot.

“I used to. Not anymore.” He said, walking over to pick his glass up from the table.

“Why not?”

“Palmer case.”

Gordon looked up, frowning a little in confusion.

“How’s that?”

“They played it every night in the bar at the Great Northern. Got sick of hearing it. Guess I associate it with…”

Albert stopped and frowned, and then took a drink from his glass.

“You associate it with Cooper’s disappearance.”

Albert swallowed, avoiding Gordon’s gaze. “So what is this?”

“It's a ‘42.”

“Hm. Not bad.” 

* * *

**Jan. 20, 1996**

**11:51 pm**

"I still don't understand it, Gordon. I don't understand why he didn't listen to me. I don't understand what happened to him when he arrived in that godforsaken hellhole. It was like a magnet he couldn't pull himself out of." Albert refilled his glass with a new bottle, shaking his head. "Actually, that's not true. He always had been that way, I knew that, he was always getting into things he shouldn't and not knowing when to quit, no matter what I tried to tell him. It was as if… “

His voice trailed off, unable to find the words.

“Like this world was never enough for him.” Gordon said quietly.

Albert blinked.

“ … Yeah.”

He looked over at Gordon in surprise. He was staring at Albert strangely, his face obscured by the cloud of smoke billowing from the cigar on his lips. Albert walked over and sat down on the couch, frowning at him.

“What do you know about that?”

“About what.”

“About this world never being enough for him.”

Gordon puffed on his cigar, squinting at nothing in particular. 

“Did he ever say anything to you? Before he disappeared? About where he was going?”

“I don't know where Cooper is now, Albert.”

“That's not what I asked.”

Another silence while Gordon refilled his own glass, not looking at him.

“Albert, I don't know why people disappear into thin air. I don't know what drives them to pursue things that burn them up until there’s nothing left.”

Albert shook his head, feeling the alcohol buzz around in his brain.

“You fucking idiot. They do it because you tell them to, Gordon.”

“No, Albert.”

“What do you mean, ‘No’?” Albert said, putting his glass down on the table. “You know what your problem is, Gordon? This world is _more_ than enough for you. It's all you think or care about. Your ridiculous smoking jackets and French wine and food and line of endless women. You think you know--”

Gordon cut him off sharply, shaking his head, his voice harsh. “I don’t know a damned thing, Albert. 30 years and I don't know a damned thing more than when I started. I don’t even know what this world _is_ , never mind a different one. That's their business.”

“‘They’?”

Gordon grimaced, squeezing his eyes shut.

“People like Cooper.” Gordon replied, suddenly sounding exhausted.

Albert stared at him for a long moment, and then turned away, shifting uncomfortably and crossing his legs. “I think you've had a little too much to drink.”

There was another long silence. Albert suddenly realized the music had stopped, and the only sound was the ticking of the clock on the wall. He suddenly felt uncomfortable, like he had stayed too long too easily. He wondered if he should take his cue from the silence and say goodnight and call a cab. But Gordon breaks the silence first, his voice quiet and tired.

“I don’t understand any of this, Albert. Do you understand any of this?”

Albert swallowed. “Do I understand what.”

“Anything. Any god damned thing. After 20 years in the Blue Rose, do you feel like you've come to understand anything.”

Albert searched for an answer. He realized, with a sinking feeling, that he couldn't find one.

“No.”

There was another long silence while Gordon squinted at nothing in particular, with that distant look he had when his clockwork brain was spinning toward some inevitable, irretrievable conclusion. Then he seemed to come to some sort of decision, and sat his glass down on the table and turned toward Albert on the couch, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Turn around and face me, Albert.”

Albert froze, feeling Gordon's eyes on him with a quiet intensity that was also coloring his voice. His heart was racing with an emotion that he couldn't quite identify, that was somewhere between electric anticipation and embarrassment. He turned, slowly. Gordon’s expression was hard and almost unreadable, but his voice was hushed, softly insistent and inquisitive, like the touch of his fingers pressing into the shirt fabric on Albert’s shoulder.

“Is this world enough for you?”

* * *

  **1975**

They both had been there in that motel with Lois Duffy. Him and Jeffries. They both knew the truth, that people weren’t always real, that they disappeared and vanished without a trace as if they never existed. They both knew that someone could look exactly like someone else, have all of their feelings, thoughts, and memories, and yet not actually be that person. They both knew that nothing substantially distinguished a person from their ghost.

Jeffries, somehow, had taken to this discovery with a feverish kind of fascination, as if he felt there was something in it that could answer all of his questions in a way that his  work with Gordon never could. It was as if he felt that there was some secret in that motel room that was meant just for him. Gordon didn’t understand it. While Jeffries had plunged deeper and deeper into the esoterics of the case, this same knowledge had haunted him continually on loop every night while he slept, reliving the nightmare of that motel room second by second, until the gunshot blast from Lois Duffy that had somehow also taken his hearing released him back to waking reality. And when he didn't dream of Lois Duffy, he dreamt of Jeffries, vanishing without a trace in another motel room, leaving him alone in this world with the horrible truth that he, Gordon, might have never existed in the first place either.

He sat there, sometimes, watching Jeffries sit at his desk and stare off into space, lost in whatever thoughts were swirling in his head about some other world that had presented itself in that nightmarish motel. Gordon wished, suddenly, that he could find _something_ to animate himself, even anger, to shove all of Jeffries’ case files off the table onto the floor, shake him by the shoulders, yell and ask what the hell was wrong with Jeffries that he actually wanted any more of this horror. But all he found within himself was a hollow emptiness. The buzzing in his ears of resignation.

He didn’t have the right to blame Jeffries for any of this, anyway. It was his fault. Gordon was the one who had pushed the both of them into all of this.

* * *

**???**

_Is this world enough for you?_

They never talked about the kiss after that night. Gordon, or some force beyond him, seemed silently insistent about this. Gordon just intuitively knew when to abruptly change the subject every time that Albert had summoned the nerve to bring it up in order to clear the air between them. Eventually Albert just followed Gordon’s lead, supposing it was for the best that they just let it go, if they were going to work together so closely. An odd mistake, an anomaly, best left to its own devices in the dim light of memory that grew dimmer with every week that passed afterward.

He just wished he could remember what exactly had happened that night. Had it been the wine that had affected his memory? The details of the evening washed in and out of his mind depending on his mood and how he felt about Gordon at any given moment.

Who had kissed whom? Some days he remembers Gordon’s blue velvet smoking jacket catching the blue of his eyes, staring silently at Albert through the lingering haze of smoke from his cigar. He remembers Gordon asking him the question, and a whole new universe opening up while another one closed behind him. He remembers the unexpected and unsettling charisma from Gordon that made Albert flush and have to look down in confusion at his own feelings, only to look back up and find Gordon’s lips pressed against his, leading and seeking him out, before Albert could sort those feelings out for himself.

Other days he remembers Gordon’s searching, questioning gaze, their legs slightly touching, Gordon's arm draped toward Albert over the top of the couch in a posture of longing. He remembers the reverence in Gordon’s voice when he leaned toward him, and the hesitancy in his words... _Albert... Albert. Before I lose my nerve… May I kiss you?_ He remembers the unexpected tenderness of the kiss, the warm touch of Gordon’s hand on his shoulder.

And still other days Albert remembers that _he_ had leaned in first--he remembers it so clearly, and with visceral embarrassment--suddenly fed up with these roundabout word games that Gordon was always playing with him, and grabbing him by his stupid smoking jacket to kiss him, with a sense of defiance as if he had something to prove to somebody--Gordon, maybe, but also himself, and perhaps to someone who wasn't even in the room, someone he hadn't seen in almost seven years.

Other days he remembers leaning in and seeking that kiss like a refuge from the hole in his chest that he had for those same seven years, while Gordon wrapped his arms around him in wonderment, Albert having no where else to place his broken hopes than in that embrace.

They couldn't all have happened, and yet they all felt vividly true, the memories shifting in his mind like sand. He supposed it didn't matter in the end. Each memory had all ended the same way, with the clock in the hallway striking the hour and Gordon breaking the kiss first. Gordon drawing back to look at him, his eyes roving over Albert’s face and shaking his head in sadness and awe, repeating his name over and over like a mantra or magical incantation.

“Albert… Albert… _Albert_ …”

It was the longing sadness in Gordon’s eyes that woke Albert up every time from that dream, that pushed him away, off the couch and out the door. There was a guilt there, or a self-loathing, that Albert wasn't willing to shoulder with or for another person.

Not a second time.

* * *

**???**

_Is this world enough for you?_

Gordon remembers that night too. He remembers it every time their hands brush on the arms of their chairs or when their feet touch under the table. He remembers asking Albert the question that his entire universe seemed to hinge on forever after. He remembers Albert turning toward him with his heart beating in his chest at a million miles an hour. He remembers wanting to kiss him so badly, to touch his hand, to wrap his arms around Albert, to whisper his secret confessions into his ear so that he didn't have to carry them around alone anymore.

But instead he remembers turning away and fumbling for his wine glass, draining its contents and wondering when all of the confidence and bravado he claimed to have in situations like this had disappeared. He remembers letting the magic moment slip through his fingers. He remembers the clock striking the hour and Albert suddenly jumping up and abruptly excusing himself. He remembers letting Albert walk out the door.

He remembers that night every time he has to look Albert in the eyes and lie to him. He knows it's for the best that he had been such a fucking coward; the lying would be unbearable if he had actually kissed him. But it still doesn't change the fact that he missed his chance. He regrets it for the rest of his life.

* * *

 

**2017**

_Is this world enough for you?_

It is a question that means so many things. Is this work we’ve built together enough for you? Are you willing to look past my mistakes as well as yours for the sake of the cause? Will you stay? Will you fight with me? Will you sacrifice? Are you willing to make a choice? Are you willing to pull the trigger when I can't? Will you work for what is right and not give up, even after you learn one day that I've kept so much from you?

Are you real?

* * *

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The little bit about Jeffries is actually based on an RP I did with DetroitBabe, so, shout out to her.


End file.
